


Matte

by theshyauthor



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Neko!Dan, Past Abuse, Platonic Relationships, Recovery, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 10:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6606925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshyauthor/pseuds/theshyauthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil brings home a cat boy named Dan with matted fur and wary eyes on a Wednesday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matte

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for a prompt from phanfic: neko!dan was abused by his previous owner, so when Phil buys him he’s really nervous, and calls Phil master. He is perfectly obedient and flips out (like falls to his knees and starts crying and begging for forgiveness and for Phil not to hurt him or kick him out) when he does something wrong. (Kinda angsty but also fluff and happy ending please)  
> Hope you enjoy. :) x

Phil brings Dan home from the local shelter on a Wednesday. The brown fur on his ears and tale is matte, and he keeps his head down at all times from the moment Phil first lays eyes on him.

Abused.

That ugly word is written in Dan’s file, and Phil is horrified when he leafs through the pages at the shelter and sees pictures of the damage that had been done to the fragile cat boy by his past owner. He doesn’t talk, the man in a hideous yellow shirt working for the place warns Phil. He doesn’t eat properly. He shies away from all physical contact. He might attack when feeling threatened. All these words are meant to convince Phil to pick up another neko, one that likes to be cuddled and looked after, but Phil has his mind set on Dan. Maybe it’s because while all the other nekos in the shelter had tried to gain his attention, Dan had stayed in the back of his cage and eyed him warily, hiding his face as soon Phil drew closer. The look on his face when Phil attaches the leash to his collar is somewhere between terrified and miserable, and his ears are flattened to his head, almost completely hidden by a brown shock of hair, and his long tail is between his legs. He looks anything but excited to leave the shelter.

For the first few hours after they arrive at home, Phil doesn’t see Dan. The second he unhooks the leash from the collar, Dan skitters away, and Phil decides to leave him be. Everything must be new and scary for him, and Phil wants him to get used to his new surroundings at his own pace. But when night-time comes, and Dan has still not shown himself again, Phil starts to get worried. He’s tried to draw him out of wherever in the flat he’s hiding with the promise of food or a lovely warm bath maybe, but his neko remains hidden.

Eventually he finds Dan hidden under the desk in his office, curled into a ball and his tail wrapped protectively around his body. He is trembling, and hisses at Phil when the man tries to come closer. So Phil gives up on the idea of trying to coax him out from under the desk and instead brings bowls filled with food and water into the office, and leaves them there for Dan before he goes to sleep.  
___

The space under Phil’s desk becomes Dan’s sanctuary over the next week. Unless he sneaks to the toilet he’s always there, and although he’s small, being curled up like that must hurt his back and knees and entire body. 

He eats his meals and drinks his water, and a few times during the day Phil comes to the office and sits on the floor cross-legged and talks to him, but he doesn’t think that Dan ever listens. He bares his teeth and although Phil can’t see them, he’s sure that Dan’s ears are flat against his head. 

Phil knows that he should get Dan to a vet soon, because the way the old t-shirt he wears hangs suggests that under it he’s mostly skin and bones, but getting Dan out from under the desk would surely not work without violence, and that is the last thing he wants to do, hurt this cat boy even more than he’s already been in the past. At least he’s eating properly, that’s all Phil can ask for at the moment.  
___

Phil shoots up in bed as he hears a loud crash. He scrambles for his glasses and puts them on, and the alarm clock by his bed tells him that it’s 2 a.m.. His throat is dry and his heart is beating too fast, and the first thing that his mind can come up with is that there’s a burglar in his flat. The logical thing to do in that situation would probably be to call the police and lock the door, but Phil’s tired and he’s never been good at making the best decisions for himself, so he stumbles out of his room with not even a weapon in his hands to defend himself. As soon as he’s in the kitchen and turns on the lights there, he finds out that he doesn’t need one anyway.

Dan is kneeling on the floor, panting and sobbing, and the shards of what once was a glass are lying next to him.

“I’m sorry, master, I’m sorry,“ he spits out the words, but they are hard to understand because he’s crying so hard, and he’s shaking, and Phil’s heart sinks at the thought that these are the first words he has ever heard Dan speak.

Phil comes closer with the intention to comfort, but the cat boy is scrambling away, his back now pressed against the counter and his tail protectively wrapped around himself. The tears don’t stop as he raises his hands in defence, as if to shield himself from a punch.

“It was an accident, master, please. I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.“

And Dan keens as Phil takes another step closer, and it sounds like he can’t breathe anymore, and Phil is honestly at a loss for what to do in this situation. Coming closer obviously distresses the neko, but then again doing nothing doesn’t seem the right answer to this situation either. So with a sigh, Phil gets a broom and dustpan and sweeps up the shards, makes sure to not leave tiny splints behind so neither he nor Dan can get hurt. Then he takes a mug from the shelf and pours milk in, and puts it on the floor, close enough for Dan to hopefully understand that it’s meant for him, but far enough away for the cat boy to not choke on air again by feeling threatened by Phil. 

“Try to get some more sleep. It’s still early,“ Phil says before backing away and leaving the room. He lays under his blankets that night, but he can’t find any sleep, the whimpers of the cat boy haunting him.  
___

Dan doesn’t hide under the desk anymore after that night. Instead he starts cleaning. He cleans the kitchen, and the bathroom, and he washes Phil’s clothes for fucks sake, but he always keeps out of Phil’s bedroom. Whenever Phil enters a room that Dan’s in, the neko will scurry out of it and find another task to occupy himself with. And when he’s done cleaning, he starts over again, and Phil had never known that the tiles in his bathroom could be whiter than white, but now they are almost shining, and if Dan doesn’t stop cleaning soon, they both might die from the fumes of cleaning supplies, if that’s possible. Phil’s sure that it might be, because the smell of them bites his nose.

“You don't have to do that,“ Phil often finds himself saying, but Dan doesn't listen to him. Instead he cleans some more and Phil doesn’t know what to do. 

He notices the red scratch marks on Dan’s neck one evening when Dan is bent over the toilet bowl, scrubbing it clean. He’s scrubbed it clean two times this week already, and Phil has probably spent more money on cleaning supplies within the last month than in his entire life. 

Dan’s neck is pale, which draws even more attention to the red scratches around his collar than tanned skin would.

“Dan?“ Phil asks, and Dan flinches at the sound, and tries to leave the small room when he sees Phil standing by the door, but Phil’s not having any of that. He’s holding out his hands and telling Dan to stay where he is, and he watches as Dan’s ears flatten themselves and become hidden in his brown hair, and how his tail flicks around nervously. 

“What’s that on your neck?“ 

Phil reaches out to touch, but Dan draws back with a hitch in his breath and guarded eyes following every move Phil makes. There’s nowhere he can go now though, he has the toilet pressed against his back, and tears well up in his eyes. 

“Please don’t, master, I’m sorry,“ he says under his breath, and Phil’s not sure what he’s apologizing for, but he has other problems to pay attention to now anyway. His fingers touch the skin on Dan’s neck and he can feel the muscles tense underneath, shushes Dan as his fingertips graze over the abused skin there. They are definitely fresh scratches in an angry red that must have been made recently.

“The collar - does it bother you?“ Phil asks as his finger trails along the line between skin and leather that he only now realises is too tight around the neko’s throat. The outside of the collar feels soft, but he can tell that the material on the inside is not leather but a scratchy material, and that as Dan gulps, the collar cuts into his skin.

Dan shakes his head fast, but Phil doesn’t believe him. 

The clasps of the collar are at the back of Dan’s neck, and Phil carefully tugs at the thing to bring them to the side. With quick movements he opens it and takes the collar off, lets it drop to the floor. What he finds under it disgusts him. 

Dan’s neck is red. The skin looks irritated and itchy, and Phil thinks that maybe the scratch marks Dan had left at the back of his neck came from trying to stop the itching.

The cat boy looks at him wide-eyed, hands balled in fists in front of his chest as if ready to protect himself from any blows. He’s been here for weeks now, and all this time he must have been in pain from this thing, yet he had never tried to voice his discomfort or taken it off himself, and that really worries Phil. He draws up a hand and brushes some of the brown hair out of Dan’s face, long enough to cover the neko’s eyes, and the poor thing flinches violently at the gentle touch. Phil has hoped for a miracle too long, for Dan’s recovery to happen by itself. It’s time he starts to intervene and show him that he can be trusted.  
___

It turns out that interfering might not have been such a good idea after all when it’s night-time. Phil leads Dan to the guest room - the one he had intended for Dan to sleep in, but he’s sure that the cat boy only ever set foot into it when he cleaned it - and the guarded boy looks at him warily, the tip of his tail flicking nervously. 

“It’s time to go to bed,“ Phil says and he gestures to the bed, indicating for Dan to get in. 

With a resigned look in his eyes, Dan starts taking of his shirt and his trousers along with his underwear, and Phil knows that he is just acting naive at this point when hoping that Dan just likes sleeping naked. He feels relief when he watches Dan crawl on the bed, but it quickly evaporates when he sees the position Dan gets in. He’s not shuffling under the blankets, but instead on his hands and knees, face pressed into the fabric of the duvet, ass in the air and presenting, his tail protectively curled around his upper half.

Phil feels like he’s going to throw up.

He can see Dan shaking, and what’s even worse is that he can hear him sobbing, and what’s the worst is the knowledge that Dan thinks Phil honestly has it in him to use him like that. 

“Dan, no,“ he says, but his voice breaks and he swallows half of the last word, and his tongue feels too heavy in his mouth, but Dan doesn’t get out of the position and he’s panting now, and Phil doesn’t know what to do, so he flees the room like the coward he is, closes the door behind him with a bang in the hopes of Dan hearing it and realizing that he’s gone, and he runs to the toilet and retches, but nothing comes up. Phil barely sleeps that night, and he guesses that Dan doesn’t either. The next morning, he finds Dan making breakfast in the kitchen, with circles under his eyes and the familiar wariness pooling in his brown irises mixed with confusion.  
___

Dan drops to his knees in front of Phil on a Thursday evening and begs him for forgiveness, calling him master, the second Phil enters the front door coming home from work. His eyes are brimming with tears and there are red blotches on his faces, and Phil isn’t sure what’s going on, but it smells like something burned, and Dan pleads with him to not kick him out, he’ll try to be better he promises, and he’s sorry because he really didn’t mean to burn the rice. 

Out of pure instinct Phil reaches out and Dan flinches, but he stays still and closes his eyes, not even trying to block what Phil knows he thinks will be a blow. But Phil doesn’t mean to harm him - he never wants to harm anyone, really - and he starts lightly scratching behind Dan’s cat-shaped ears. They twitch a little at the contact, almost as if curious, and although Dan’s eyes are still closed, his mouth is open now and shaped in the form of an ‘o‘. 

“I’m sure that we’ll still be able to fix the rice somehow,“ Phil tells him in a quiet voice as to not startle the boy, and with a final gentle pat to his head, he leaves for the kitchen, Dan carefully trailing him, always keeping enough distance to still be out of reach. Some rice is black and sticking to the bottom of the pot, but most of it is edible nonetheless, and there’s grilled chicken in a pan and a bowl of green salad on the counter, and Phil thanks Dan for taking the time for cooking for them and distributes the food on two plates, making Dan’s portion larger than his because the neko is still too thin for his liking. He gets a bottle of beer for himself and a glass of milk for Dan, and gestures for Dan to sit down at the dining table. The cat boy complies but looks on guard, and he eats slowly, chews carefully, as if awaiting the other shoe to drop and expecting to still be punished for his mistake. 

That evening, after the dishes are taken care of - “Dan, really, you don’t need to do the cleaning. You’ve already cooked!“ But Dan did all the dishes anyway - Phil’s lying on the couch and watching TV, as he does most evenings. It’s the first evening, however, that Dan stays in the room with him. 

The way he acts makes Phil think that Dan doesn’t want Phil to notice that he’s there. He’s sneaking around, careful not to make a single sound, and he thinks that he stays outside of Phil’s vision at all times. But Phil can see him mirrored in the glass of a poster he’s framed and hung up on the wall, and he smiles to himself as he watches the cat boy curl up on the floor and look at the TV screen in interest, eyes flickering to Phil with full alert every time he moves so much as an arm to cover his mouth while yawning.  
___

It’s a slow and long process for Dan to learn to understand that no, Phil is not his master and no, he’s not expected to either clean or provide any sexual services. He’s often confused, because all he’s been taught by his previous master is now worthless knowledge, and sometimes Phil sees the question marks dancing across Dan’s head, but eventually he manages to draw the cat boy out of his shell.

It begins with talking. Previously he has only heard Dan’s voice when begging for forgiveness, but one morning as Phil asks him if he has slept well, Dan answers with a simple yes. They both look equally surprised, but then Phil smiles and Dan - who for a second looks horrified and ready to drop down to his knees again - slightly relaxes, and the silence between them is slowly drowned out by short conversations, Phil asking the questions and Dan giving short answers. 

He gains weight and he starts looking healthier, his skin radiating and the once matted fur on his tail looking shiny. His bruises are gone and the ugly scars start to fade, and his neck is not red anymore and free of irritated scratch marks. Phil buys him clothes and watches with satisfaction as Dan stops shovelling down food like he’s scared that it might be taken away from him at any second, instead savouring the taste now and eating more slowly. 

The first time he stays on the couch with Phil while watching TV in the evening, he’s rigid and tense and casts glances to his owner every few seconds, but he falls asleep soon after, and when he wakes up and sees Phil sitting close to him, he scrambles away and falls off the couch and runs to his room. He doesn’t talk the next morning.

It takes months for Dan to be comfortable with being petted. Phil eases him into it slowly, sometimes scratches the spot behind his ears because he knows Dan likes that, and he watches with sad eyes as Dan flinches away from his touch in the beginning, but Dan learns that Phil’s hands mean no harm over time, and slowly Phil begins rubbing his back or his arms. Dan starts to purr one night when he’s curled up on the floor in front of the couch and Phil is stroking his hair, and he stops and holds his breath for a second, but Phil just smiles and encourages him to go on. And sometimes, very rarely, Dan even finds the courage to tap Phil’s hand when they are close to each other or nuzzle into it with his head to ask for touches, because once he realizes that it feels good and is gentle and that Phil won’t lash out at him, the comfort of soft contact of skin against skin becomes his new favourite thing.

There are setbacks. A door closing too loudly will have Dan flinch, or when he makes a mistake he will sometimes still fall to his knees and beg, but Phil knows that it’s only a matter of time for Dan to understand that there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of here, that he’s completely safe, that he is meant as a companion and not as a slave. And when he sees Dan playful for the first time - having found a ball of wool and chasing it around the living room, laughing to himself quietly as his hands tangle in the threads - he knows that Dan’s almost there.


End file.
